


they didn't say what we lost

by elumish



Series: The Return [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode: s03e10-e11 The Return, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 06:17:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5956750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The PTSD isn’t the problem and neither is the flying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they didn't say what we lost

The problem with coming home—he has to keep reminding himself it’s over, this isn’t just leave, this isn’t just being switched to a unit for a while because he keeps doing reckless shit and has to be reminded they own him—is that he already had a life. Afghanistan—and all the other places he tries not to think about where he did shit he tries not to remember—wasn’t real life, not really, it was going somewhere and doing something and then waiting until you had something else to do, with the occasional shelling and RPGs and whatever else they had to try to shoot you out of the sky. Atlantis, though, Atlantis was a city where he had friends and a real 24/7 365 job and a life.

And he knows he has PTSD—they all do, even the civilians, no matter that they have no idea how the fuck to talk about it because nobody trains botanists in living through sieges—but he also knows that’s not really the problem here. Or maybe it is, because it’s the post part that’s getting to him, even though he’s still going out and being shot at, because he’s past the trauma in a way he never was before because Afghanistan was different from Pakistan was different from all of the other places he wasn’t supposed to be but they were all still the same even though he didn’t know it until he got to Atlantis. But now he’s lost Atlantis, and maybe that’s the trauma, maybe it’s not the torture and the sieges and the bombardment and the never actually sleeping and the idea of never going home, it’s that he’s lost Atlantis, and that was never supposed to happen. Because Atlantis could lose him, but he couldn’t lose it.

But the problem is that it’s like reintegrating into being a civilian without actually being a civilian, and he keeps waiting for a proximity warning that’s never coming, and he was fine with the snow until he had the ocean, and if they keep treating him like he’s something special he might actually shoot someone but also if they keep pretending Atlantis never happened he might shoot someone anyway.

And maybe the worst part is that he’s not even flying, that losing Atlantis took that away from him too, because being sent to Antarctica took his whole life away from him but at least he still got to fly, and now he’s back—home, he’s home, they’re home—and he still gets to walk through the gate and he hasn’t been in the air in so long he thinks he might just lose it.

But the PTSD isn’t the problem and neither is the flying. The problem is that he wants the trauma back, wants the pain and the almost-dying and the too-close-for-anyone-sane if it’ll give him back his _life._

**Author's Note:**

> I was bored and am avoiding work. Anyone else you want to see a snippet/character study/whatever for for during The Return?


End file.
